The best lunch bags!

I've been meaning to write about the lunch bags I got for the girls this year.  I got bags that are made from plastic bottles.   We got the pink one, the dark green one, and the light green one.

I LOVE THEM.

When I was looking for bags for the girls, my two required features were that the bags were 1) durable and 2) easy to clean.  To me, a dirty lunch box is disgusting.  We had insulated lunch bags last year, from Land's End and they were neither durable nor easy to clean.  After we had used them a couple of months, I wanted to toss them.  They were disgustingly dirty on the outside and their insulation was ripping.  Their ripping insulation made them a lot harder to clean inside, too.  UGH!  I managed to talk myself out of tossing them because it seemed wrong; it seems like a lunch bag should last for at least a year.

This year, I wasn't going to make the same mistake--I wanted bags that would last and not make me cringe when I looked at them.  I spent lots of time looking at choices.  I considered another brand of lunch bags that were made from recycled bottles, but they had insulation in them.  They looked easy to clean on the outside, but the insulation on the inside looked like it would rip pretty quickly.  I decided to look for a bag that was made from recycled bottles without insulation.  I don't care much about insulation; the girls don't take food that has to be kept hot or cold.  By choice, they take PB sandwiches pretty much everyday.  twoK will sometimes take hummus or black beans, but she eats them at whatever temperature and they aren't likely to spoil in 3.5 hours of sitting at room temperature.

So back to the bags, it took me a while to find them, but I finally remembered Google was my friend and I typed in "plastic bottle lunch bag."  I found the  Clean Conscience bags as the fifth link down.  As soon as I saw these bags, I ordered them!

We've had these bags for about 2 months.  The girls take their lunch every day, they throw them around, and they eat on wood picnic tables that aren't very clean.  The bags are holding up GREAT!  I washed them about a month ago when they were getting a little dirty and they came out of the washing machine looking brand new.  I'm planning to wash them once a month (getting time to do the second washing).  I'll let you know at the end of the year how well they last, but they look like they are going to do really well!  I'll keep you posted.